Masochistic submission occupies a contested and generative space within depth-psychological literature, traversing the distance between clinical description, characterological analysis, and existential-philosophical critique. Fromm’s sustained treatment in *Escape from Freedom* remains the most architecturally ambitious engagement: he situates masochistic submission not as a mere sexual anomaly but as a socially conditioned flight from the burden of selfhood, a mechanism whereby the isolated modern individual surrenders freedom, identity, and decision-making to an overpowering external or internalized authority. The pathological logic is one of relief—relief from doubt, from responsibility, from the vertigo of existence. Hillman, approaching from archetypal psychology, resists the reductive pathologizing inaugurated by Krafft-Ebing’s taxonomic naming of masochism and insists the phenomenon carries a soulful, even thanatic dimension irreducible to clinical dysfunction. Herman provides the indispensable corrective from trauma studies, exposing how the diagnostic category ‘masochistic personality disorder’ was historically weaponized against battered women, naturalizing the victim’s submission as character rather than coerced adaptation. Rank grounds masochistic comportment in the birth trauma and its affective re-valuation. Abraham illuminates the clinical phenomenology through dream-states and hysterical pleasure-in-suffering. Together, the corpus reveals a term at the intersection of drive theory, social psychology, feminist critique, and archetypal speculation—its stakes nowhere less than the question of whether self-annulment is pathology, escape, soul-work, or ideological compliance.
The different forms which the masochistic strivings assume have one aim: to get rid of the individual self, to lose oneself; in other words, to get rid of the burden of freedom.
Fromm identifies the telos of masochistic submission as the annihilation of individual selfhood, reframing it as existential escape from freedom’s anxiety rather than mere sexual pathology.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
The masochistic person, whether his master is an authority outside of himself or whether he has internalized the master as conscience or a psychic compulsion, is saved from making decisions, saved from the final responsibility for the fate of his self.
Fromm argues that masochistic submission—whether directed toward an external authority or an internalized one—functions as a defense against existential responsibility and the anxiety of selfhood.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
Frequently it is not the actual suffering of pain that is sought for, but the excitement and satisfaction aroused by being physically bound, made helpless and weak.
Fromm broadens the phenomenology of masochism beyond pain-seeking to encompass the desire for helplessness and moral subordination, establishing its psychological logic as the craving for dependency.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
The powerlessness of man is the leitmotif of masochistic philosophy. One of the ideological fathers of Nazism, Moeller van der Bruck, expressed this feeling very clearly.
Fromm connects masochistic submission to authoritarian political ideology, arguing that the conviction of human powerlessness is both the psychological substrate and philosophical expression of the masochistic character.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
This masochistic sacrifice sees the fulfillment of life in its very negation, in the annihilation of the self. It is only the supreme expression of what Fascism aims at in all its ramifications—the annihilation of the individual self and its utter submission to a higher power.
Fromm identifies the fascist glorification of sacrifice as the political apotheosis of masochistic submission, wherein self-annihilation before a higher power is presented as life’s supreme fulfillment.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941thesis
A group of male psychoanalysts proposed that ‘masochistic personality disorder’ be added to the canon. This hypothetical diagnosis applied to any person who ‘remains in relationships in which others exploit, abuse, or take advantage of him or her, despite opportunities to alter the situation.’
Herman exposes how the diagnostic codification of masochistic submission as personality disorder naturalizes trauma-coerced compliance, misidentifying the adaptive responses of abuse survivors as intrinsic characterological defects.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992thesis
As long as masochism is regarded as a sexual anomaly only and sexuality is taken only as a concrete ‘function,’ the psychological import is reduced to piecemeal localizations in the sexual function or in one’s personal history.
Hillman argues that confining masochism to sexual pathology forecloses its archetypal and thanatic dimensions, reducing a soul-level phenomenon to a correctable functional defect.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
As Esquirol’s definition of hallucinations was decisive for the visions of the soul, so was Krafft-Ebing’s definition of masochism decisive for the sufferings of the soul.
Hillman demonstrates that Krafft-Ebing’s taxonomic naming of masochism imposed a pathological frame that foreclosed deeper psychological and soul-oriented interpretations of suffering-as-submission.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
Masochistic dependency is conceived as love or loyalty, inferiority feelings as an adequate expression of actual shortcomings, and one’s suffering as being entirely due to unchangeable circumstances.
Fromm identifies the characteristic rationalizations by which masochistic submission disguises itself within normal moral and relational categories, rendering it invisible as pathology.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
Although the character of persons in whom sado-masochistic drives are dominant can be characterized as sado-masochistic, such persons are not necessarily neurotic.
Fromm relativizes the pathological status of the sado-masochistic character by embedding it in its social matrix, arguing that cultural norms can normalize what would otherwise register as disorder.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
The masochistic character explains a great deal of Hitler’s and his followers’ political actions. While the Republican government thought they could ‘appease’ the Nazis by treating them leniently, they not only failed to appease them but aroused their hatred by the very lack of power and firmness they showed.
Fromm applies the masochistic character structure to political psychology, arguing that submission to strength and contempt for weakness are the operative dynamics in authoritarian mass movements.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
Whilst the masochist seeks to re-establish the original pleasurable condition by means of affective revaluation of the birth trauma, the sadist personifies the unquenchable hatred of one who has been expelled.
Rank grounds masochistic submission in the psychic economy of the birth trauma, interpreting it as a regressive drive to re-establish the pre-natal condition of total engulfment and passive union.
, The Trauma of Birth, 1924supporting
Her phantasies used to induce a state of still greater suffering in her and one of absolute passivity; and from this she obtained masochistic pleasure.
Abraham documents the clinical phenomenology of masochistic pleasure in hysterical dream-states, noting the deliberate induction of suffering and absolute passivity as a characteristic pattern.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting
The martyr stands rejoicing and triumphant, even though his body is torn to pieces; and when his side is ripped open by the sword, not only with courage but even with joy he sees the blood which he has consecrated to God gush forth from his body.
Hillman invokes the mystical literature of martyrdom to illustrate the archetypal dimension of masochistic suffering, positioning ecstatic self-surrender within a transpersonal and religious frame.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
The sadist wants to dominate his object and therefore suffers a loss if his object disappears. Sadism, as we have used the word, can also be relatively free from destructiveness and blended with a friendly attitude towards its object.
Fromm delineates the relational structure of the sadistic pole complementary to masochistic submission, clarifying that the symbiotic bond requires the masochist’s submission as the condition for the sadist’s power.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941supporting
Levitating like some kind of divinity above the poor patient, reduced to the status of a mere child, unsuspecting that a large share of what is described as transference is artificially provoked by this kind of behavior.
Ferenczi identifies the analytic power arrangement as a structurally induced submission in which the patient is reduced to childlike passivity, an iatrogenic analog to masochistic dependency.
, The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, 1932aside
The mechanisms we shall discuss in this chapter are mechanisms of escape, which result from the insecurity of the isolated individual. Once the primary bonds which gave security to the individual are [dissolved].
Fromm situates masochistic submission within his broader typology of escape mechanisms, identifying it as a response to the existential insecurity produced by the dissolution of pre-modern communal bonds.
, Escape from Freedom, 1941aside